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PAPERS: Jane Herlihy, Peter Scragg, and Stuart Turner Discrepancies in autobiographical memories implications for the assessment of asylum seekers: repeated interviews study BMJ 2002; 324: 324-327 [Abstract] [Full text]

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Much else to consider

Juliet R Cohen   (13 February 2002)

Much else to consider 13 February 2002
Juliet R Cohen, Senior medical examiner Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, 96 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London NW5 Send response to journal: Re: Much else to consider	Editor, While there is perhaps limited research on specific memory problems of asylum seekers this study is hardly the first to highlight discrepancies between successive accounts of the same event. Bartlett wrote about this in 1932. More recently Anderson, Cohen and Taylor (2000) confirmed the variability of autobiographical memory. They found that recent memories varied more than older memories and that in both old and young subjects the second recall of a memory produced an elaboration of the original version with less than 50% of the facts being identical and much new detail being added. Their findings are consistent with the generally held view that memories are largely reconstructed on recall, not reproduced and that hypermnesia (or 'reminiscence'), remembering more and different details on each recall is so widespread as to hardly warrant the title phenomenon. Christianson and Loftus showed in 1991 that increased arousal during an event led to a concentration on central detail with reduced recall of peripheral detail. This is clearly directly relevant to the events recall as traumatic by asylum seekers. It seems from Herlihy, Scragg and Turner's paper that the time between interviews varied randomly, yet they highlight the interaction of post-traumatic stress and time as being a very important finding. It would have been more interesting then to compare differences in discrepancy rates with increasing time if the time intervals had been standardised. Although subjects were assessed for post-traumatic stress symptoms and depression it is not clear if there was any correlation between severity of the two conditions, which have a significant number of overlapping symptoms, and no attempt seems to have been made to exclude the effects of depression on memory. According to DE Dietrich (2000) "one of the most frequent and neuro-psychologically well investigated symptoms in depression is reduced memory capacity". Nor are any of the other clinical conditions commonly found in asylum seekers that can affect memory discussed. These include weight loss and malnutrition, traumatic brain injury (major and minor) stress level, sleep disorder and chronic pain which were reviewed in my article 'Errors of Recall and Credibility: Can omissions and discrepancies in successive statements reasonably be said to undermine testimony?' (2001) Asylum seekers do suffer from denial of credibility and claims are dismissed on grounds of minor discrepancies. The difficulty is not to convince the medical profession of the variable nature of memories but to change the fundamental process of witness testimony in law. Why is consistency valued so highly when common sense as well as research tells us it is difficult to tell a story exactly the same way twice? Juliet Cohen Senior Medical Examiner Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, 96-98 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London NW5 4BD andrew@paindoc.demon.co.uk Competing interests-none. 1. Herlihy J, Scragg P, Turner S. Discrepancies in autobiographical memories-implications for the assessment of asylum seekers: repeated interviews study. BMJ 2002 324:324-7. (9 February) 2. Barlett FC (1932) "Remembering", Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 3. Anderson SJ, Cohen G, Taylor S (2000) Rewriting the Past: some factors in the variability of personal memories. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14:435-54. 4. Christianson SA, Loftus EF, Hoffman H, Loftus GR (1991) Eye fixations and memory for emotional events. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory and Cognition. 17(4):693-70. 5. Cohen J (2001) Errors of Recall and Credibility: Can omissions and discrepancies in successive statements reasonably be said to undermine credibility of testimony? Medico-Legal Journal 69 (1)25-34.